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Ms Forster was a prolific writer, with novels including Have The Men Had Enough? (1989), The Memory Box (1999), and Lady's Maid (1990).

She was also an acclaimed non-fiction author, with her biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning winning the Heinemann Award in 1989 and her work Daphne Du Maurier: The Secret Life Of The Renowned Storyteller winning the Writers' Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction in 1993.

In 2014 she wrote a memoir, My Life In Houses, which told the story of her life from a Carlisle council estate, via Oxford, to London's Hampstead and her Lake District home.

It followed two previous memoirs, Hidden Lives (1995) and Precious Lives (1998), which focused on her family and their history.